Friday, December 19, 2014

This is the first draft of my thoughts on the project, so bear with me:

I'm the reason why when your browsing for somewhere to eat on Yelp, you see pictures of bathrooms. My profile

"The first thing I do is check to see if the bathroom is clean. If it's not clean, then it indicates that they're not paying attention." - Chef Michael Merida

I heard this quote a few months ago and it left a strong impression on me. For as long as I can remember I have always wondered why businesses let their bathrooms detoriate are to such a sad state. I would thing "if I owned a business, I would be so proud that I would pay attention to the details like the bathroom". I would be embarrassed if someone set foot in my bathroom and they had a strong repulsion.

I realized leaving pictures of a business in yelp reviews could be very compelling motivation for business owners to pay attention

I stuck with a 5 star rating in my picutre comments to be consistent with yelps own rating systems.

If you are reading this I'm sure you are curious about how I define my ranking system

After much thought and discussion I decided any business should be able to achieve a 5 start rating. I don't expect a fast food joint to have a bathroom attendant. This means the expectation are relative to the type of establishment.

Any business can and should be clean to the point that I can tell a deep clean has been done more than once a year.

I don't want to see dust clogging the ceiling vent. I don't want to see mold or mildew in corners or along the baseboards. I don't want to see holes or random screws sticking out of the wall from previous installations.

I do want to see good lighting, a garbage can that is appropriately sized and emptied frequently as appropriate for the businesses traffic, a comfortable layout, functional hardware.

1 - I probably turned around and walked out
2 - out of toilet paper, soap, towels, malfunctioning hardware. Appears only daily effort is emptying trash.
3 - Fully functional and appears to be cleaned daily. But I wonder if a deep clean has ever been done?
4 - attention to detail, space is well put together. Appears deep clean is done on a reasonably frequent schedule
5 - I would be willing to eat a meal in here!

Sunday, November 02, 2014

My wife and I have been running together a couple times a week for the last 5 years. When we got our first iPhone, Nike+ Running was one of the first apps we downloaded. We have used it on almost every run since.

Nike understands the social element of running, integrating many features that encourage and inspire you. But these feature all connect you to people who you are not physically running with.

What about the people you are running with in person? Each runner need not carry their own device to log the data.

I propose a "Running Buddy Sync" feature that allows you to pair your account with any of your friends. After a run has completed, during the post-run data collection sheet (how you felt, type of run, running pace map...) you are also presented an option to add any Running Buddies. Once selected the run data will be pushed to each of their respective Nike+ accounts automatically.

This would make the Nike+ platform more sticky because runners would be incentivized to promote the app to their friends. And at least in my case it would be the difference between having 1 Nike+ account that we share to log our workouts together, and 2 active accounts.

I have been pondering this feature for the last 6 months, but I feel it is evening more pressing with the advent of comprehensive health tracking in iOS8. I have enjoyed the ease with which I'm able to get a high level overview of my fitness and sleep patterns.

It's increasingly frustrating when there is useful data being collected but isn't being used to it's fullest potential.